After the massacre of the Huguenots on Saint Bartholomew’s Day in 1572, Prince Henri-Robert de La Marck, a convert to Calvinism, opened Sedan to the many Protestants who fled the reprisals. In 1607, Prince Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne created a French-speaking Calvinist academy in Sedan whose intellectual influence attracted students from all over Europe. A large temple, called the Temple neuf, was built in 1593. Nicknamed the “Geneva of the North” for its liberalism, Sedan gradually returned to Catholicism when it became part of France in 1642. The temple then became the Catholic church of Saint-Charles.